Poem: W. G. Sebald

Although he is best known as one of the exemplary prose writers of the late 20th century, W. G. Sebald (1944-2001) also wrote poetry, and a few years ago, in one of my favorite used bookstores in Chicago, I found a little book of his poetry, with artwork by the abstractionist Tess Jaray. Here's one of the poems from this collection, which are all written in the following style. It reads like an epigraph for so much of his work:

It was as if

I was lying
under a low
sky breathing
through the eye
of a needle

Copyright ©, from W. G. Sebald, For Years Now (images by Tess Jaray), London: Short Books, 2001, p. 57. All rights reserved.